"But, Roddy, how could you be so disobedient, dear? And you remember what your mother said this morning?"
"Yes, I remember; but I did not promise. If I had promised, I would not have gone."
"Well, will you promise me, darling?"
But at that he broke away from her and ran toward the house, singing,
"Just a little peep-in—just a little peep-in."
She felt more than slightly dispirited. There were three bad nights behind her, and the day had been particularly tiring. Though young and energetic, and with an extraordinary sense of love and responsibility toward these naughty, attractive children, she wondered, for a weary moment, whether she could stand the racket. The work of governessing was new to her. Any work was new to her, and governessing in Africa is as different to governessing in England (which is bad enough) as plowing cultivated land is to opening up virgin soil. But life had unexpectedly laid the burden of work upon Christine Chaine, and having put her hand to the plow, she did not mean to turn back. Only, for once, she was glad when nightfall brought the hour when she could leave her charges for a while in someone else's care.
Once the children were safely in bed, it was Meekie's task to sit beside them until Christine had dined and rested, and chose to come to bed. Meekie belonged to the kraal people, but she had white blood in her, like so many natives, and spoke very good English.
That all the men on the farm should turn up to dinner that evening did not seem to Christine so much a cause for surprise as for contempt. In her short but not too happy experience of life, she had, like a certain great American philosopher, discovered that the game of life is not always "played square" when there is a woman in it. Of course, it was comprehensible that all men liked a good dinner, especially when it was not marred by hymns and long prayers, fervent to the point of fanaticism. Equally, of course, the pretty hostess, with a charming word of welcome for everyone, was an attraction in herself. But, somehow, it sickened the clear heart of Christine Chaine to see this jubilant gathering round a dinner table that was usually deserted, and from which the host had just departed, a sick and broken man. She thought the proceedings more worthy of a lot of heartless schoolboys delighting in a master's absence than of decent, honest men.
And whatever she thought of the Hollanders and colonials, whose traditions were unknown to her, it was certain that her scorn was redoubled for the one man she knew to be of her own class and land.
Yet there he sat at the elbow of his hostess, calm and smiling, no whit removed from his usual self-contained and arrogant self. Christine gave him one long look that seemed to turn her violet eyes black; then she looked no more his way. She could not have told why she hated this action in him so bitterly. Perhaps she felt that he was worthy of higher things, but, if questioned, she would probably have laid it at the door of caste and country. All that she knew, for a poignant moment, was an intense longing to strike the smile from his lips with anything to hand—a wine-glass, a bowl, a knife.
Mercifully, the moment passed, and all that most of them saw was a young girl who had come late to dinner—a girl with a rather radiant skin, purply black hair that branched away from her face as though with a life of its own, and violet eyes that, after one swordlike glance all round, were hidden under a line of heavy lashes. The black-velvet dinner gown she wore, simple to austerity, had just a faint rim of tulle at the edges against her skin. Only an artist or connoisseur would have observed the milkiness of that skin and the perfect lines under the sombre velvet. Small wonder that most eyes turned to the lady who tonight took the place of ceremony at the table, and who, as always, was arrayed in the delicate laces and pinkish tints that seemed to call to notice the gold of the hair, the rose of her cheek, and the golden-brown shadows of her eyes.